The organisation of the Australian Country Party (N.S.W), 1946 to 1962

Abstract

Founded by primary producers and encouraged by separatists, the Country Party in New South Wales won parliamentary representation in 1920 and a share in government in 1927* By 1941 it had been in power in a series of coalition governments for 12 of the preceding 14 years in New South Wales and for 13 of the preceding 18 years in federal politics. The great advance of the A.L.P. in the 1940s did not destroy the Country Party, as it did the U.A.P., but caused it to alter its structure. From a political organisation run by and for the primary producers' organisations it emerged in 1946 as a 'popular' political party with a mass membership no longer directly connected to industry organisations.